Where to Find Political Reform in China

The Chinese Communist Party is often criticized for refusing to carry out political reforms, a charge the Party routinely denies. While it is true that systemic reforms that reshape existing political institutions and processes have yet to take place, travel outside the capital and you’ll find no shortage of local-level trials and experiments with political reform.

One example of a little-known but successful reform experiment is a pilot project aimed at promoting “transparent exercise of power” by county-level Party Committees launched by the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Organization Department of the Party’s Central Committee in March 2009. Initially rolled out in three localities, the pilot was expanded in 2010 to include 69 counties across the country.

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One of those counties, Changshu, located in the economically dynamic Yangtze River Delta region near Shanghai, was the subject of a recent study by researchers at Soochow University in Suzhou, who praised the Changshu pilot as pointing to a way forward for putting checks on the power of the Party.”

The main component of the pilot is the creation of a “power list” that maps out the authority of each institution and official. Changshu’s power list, for example, shows that the Secretary of the Party Committee can exercise 12 powers including chairing Party Committee meetings that make major decisions and supervising lower-level cadres. The Deputy Secretary, who concurrently holds the government post of Mayor of Changshu, also has 12 powers, including changing or repealing the decisions of government departments.

Given the high degree of fusion between the Party and the government, in Changshu, as in a number of other pilot sites, the practice of producing“power lists” is not limited to Party posts and institutions but has been extended to the government.

Most importantly, the exercise of creating the lists has also been carried out in every government department, resulting in a “power database,” parts of which are available on the government’s website, that registers a total of over 5,000 administrative powers exercised by different departments, including the power to impose more than 4,000 types of administrative penalties on citizens, businesses and other legal entities. Each entry of administrative authority in the database is carefully checked to ensure that there is sufficient legal ground for every power listed.

Instead of merely listing the various powers and authorities of Party and government organs and cadres, Changshu has also drawn up flow charts to standardize the processes whereby powers are exercised. In one example, the database shows that the Work Safety Supervision Bureau has the authority to grant licenses to retailers of firecrackers. A flow chart explains that retailers should first submit a preliminary application for a license to their local Work Safety Supervision offices then go to the Changshu City Bureau to submit a full application. If the application documents are in order, the Bureau officially accepts the application and will conduct a site inspection of the retail venue within five working days. If the venue meets the requirements, then a license will be issued. If not, then a written notice will be issued to the applicant explaining the reasons for rejecting the application. In any case, the Bureau should complete the process within 20 working days.

While clearing up the process of obtaining a firecracker sales license may seem like a mundane matter, the publication of these databases and flowcharts represents a significant step forward in local government transparency. They have great potential for preventing corruption and power abuse by enabling public oversight over the government. The clear demarcation of the power and functions of the Party and the government helps avoid excessive domination of government functions by the Party and promotes rule-of-law-based governance.

The case of Changshu is just one example of reforms taking place in China. Around the country, innovations in the political realm have constantly been introduced by local authorities. Some innovations are encouraged or even directed by the Party center, as in the Changshu case, while others are purely local initiatives that are tolerated but receive no support from higher authorities.

The local innovations suggest that desire for political reform is not absent, but the political will to extend successful local reforms upwards has been sorely missing. Efforts to make officials disclose their personal assets, for example, have so far been limited to a few local pilots, most notably in Guangdong (in Chinese). Direct elections continue to be implemented at the village level only. Various experiments to expand citizen participation in government decision-making, including some that have been run successfully for over a decade, have failed to make a big splash outside the localities that pioneered them.

Many local reforms face the challenge of sustainability, not because of their own weaknesses but because of the mismatch between the new practices and the larger system that remains unreformed. In the Changshu case, for instance, while reform has made cadre appointments below the county level more transparent, the appointment of county Party Secretaries and mayors themselves has not been subjected to a similarly transparent process, since county-level officials are appointed by higher levels. When the exercise of power at higher levels and in the Party-state system as a whole remains opaque, it is questionable how institutionalized and effective county-level reforms can become.

China does not lack political reforms, at least not at the local level. What it lacks is so-called “top-level design”—the willingness to extend reform measures to the system as a whole, especially to those in the upper echelons of the power hierarchy. Calls for “top-level design” to push through much-needed reforms have grown louder in the last couple of years. As a first step, high-level endorsement of innovative local experiments would be very welcome. Many local reformers have come under enormous pressure from those opposing their reforms and are desperate to receive Beijing’s blessing. Simply by expressing some support for these local reforms instead of remaining silent, the leadership could go a long way towards creating confidence in its commitment to reform.

Yiyi Lu, an expert on Chinese civil society, is currently working on a project to promote open government information in China. She is the author of “Non-Governmental Organisations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy” (Routledge 2008).

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